Recently I was reviewing ads to see if I could find more great ones to ad to video ads. As I perused them I kept finding ones that made me laugh but “objectified women” were racist or in some way offended someone. Of course that’s why they were funny and got hundreds of thousands of views.
Am I right?
Are the funniest and most watched ads politically incorrect?
What do you think?
– Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Get Attention
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….
It’s awfully quiet.
….
Nothing? Really?
Making money with your website by leaving your profits to chance is like buying a lottery ticket. You might win — anything is possible — but the odds are against you.
If you’re serious about making money online, make testing part of your web marketing strategy. Let’s look at why testing matters and what to test and when.
Why Testing Matters
A couple of weeks ago I headed out after work for a quick 20 mile bike ride. Nice evening, not too much traffic – everything was going great until my rear tire went flat.
I thought, no problem, I’ve got spare tubes and a sleek, lightweight carbon fiber pump I paid a premium for. Within seconds I had the new tube in the tire. But when I went to inflate it, I discovered, much to my chagrin, that my pump didn’t fit the tire valve.
I’d never tested my pump. I didn’t know that I’d chosen a great looking and expensive pump that only worked on one type of tire valve. More importantly, it didn’t work on the valves I had with me. There I was by the side of the road with all the tools to fix a flat, but they didn’t work together to get me rolling again.
Is your web site broken down leaving you stuck?
Find out how to fix it >>
You have a home page, a couple of additional supporting pages, an email address for people to contact you. Your site looks great, but is it working to generate leads, sales and profits?
What’s the solution?
Testing!
You want to optimize your site’s performance so it brings in a steady stream of profits. Without testing, you won’t know what’s working and what’s not. Each element of your web site needs to be tested to see if it is actually doing the job you expect it to do.
Here are the top 3 things to test.
1. Your Marketing Message
Test the headline you put at the top of the page that tells people why they should stay on your site. You can use Google Ads to run split tests to two different pages and see which headline keeps people on the page the longest or which prompts the most number of people to contact you.
2. Your Free Offer
One of the fastest ways to generate leads with your site is to offer something for free, but just adding a free offer subscribe form on your page won’t get you the most leads. The key is to provide your site visitors with a compelling reason to give you their contact information.
Test the offers you provide, even if it’s just for something you are giving away, to see which offers generate the most leads and sales. The wrong offer won’t generate leads. Find the right one, and you can easily prompt dozens of people to contact you each day and double or triple your profits.
3. Your Page Design
The size, color and placement of different elements on the page determine how well your visitors understand what you want them to do. Changing the size and color of your headline and subhead, for example, can make all the difference in whether or not visitors take the action you want them to take.
For example, I recently did a test with the sign up form on my home page. Instead of asking people to sign up for my free report in two places at the top of the page, I designed a larger sign-up form and asked them once. The larger, single sign up form converted twice as well.
You could spend the next 10 years figuring out what works to sell online — or you could use proven web marketing strategies and techniques to get results right away.
Here’s the shortcut to online success >>
How Much Can Testing Improve Your Sales?
I had one client who was a big believer in testing. Every time I suggested a change to their site, they’d test it to see if they wanted to make it a permanent one.
Within the first three months that I worked with them, they tripled their lead acquisition and sales. Over the next three years we continued to test the elements of their site and ultimately increased their conversion rates by a factor of 17.
Want to increase your online sales by a factor of 17?
Here’s how >>
Testing is the key. To make it simple for you, I’ve spent the last 10 years testing what works to get more people to come to your site, to contact you and to buy from you.
Many web site owners leave their online profits to chance. I know you’re smarter than that and would rather put proven techniques and strategies to use to jump-start your sales.
Don’t get stranded beside the road, as I did when I forgot to test my bike pump. Discover what works to make your web site a success.
To your success,
Charlie
P.S. Try this one test to evaluate whether you’re web site is working. Is it making a profit of $10,000 or more each month?
Smart people like you know when to stop doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If your web site isn’t making as much money as you want it to make, you know it’s time to take action and get back on the road to success.
Here’s how >>
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“My web site stinks! I’ve been spending thousands of dollars a week on pay-per-click ads but they’re not paying for themselves. I’m only getting a few leads and sales from my site. What am doing wrong? How do I get my web site to sell?”
Martha C., NY
What’s Missing From Your Web Site?
Are you wondering why all the people who come to your web site don’t contact you or buy from you? You know you’ve got top quality products and services, but few visitors to your site are staying long enough to read the details, much less contact you or buy from you.
Want to know the secret marketing strategy to making your web site highly profitable? Use this link>>
Shift Your Focus Away From Traffic
Most web site owners do what Martha did. They put up a web site and then they focus on getting all the traffic they can to their site. Typically the fastest way to do this is to spend money on pay-per-click advertising. That’s the first and biggest mistake!
I regularly talk to web site owners who’ve spent thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars a month on pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. They’re spending money hand over fist on driving traffic to their sites and still not breaking even.
Imagine you have a relatively new car. It still has that distinctive new car smell, but it has a major defect. Every time you turn the engine on, all you can do is rev the engine. You can’t get the car in gear. Obviously your shiny new car isn’t taking you anywhere.
What would you do? You’d get your engine repaired immediately.
Find out the fastest way to fix your site >>
Like your car, if your web site isn’t doing it’s most basic job, you won’t move forward. No matter how much money you spend to bring traffic to your site, if you aren’t converting traffic to leads and sales, your site won’t be profitable. There are thousands of web sites selling products and services that customers want. Very few of them successfully convert traffic to profits.
Why Most People Focus On Traffic and Why You Shouldn’t
Most web site owners focus their spending on getting more traffic to their sites for a simple reason; it’s easy. Just cut the check for your SEO expert, or send the payments to Google or one of the other pay-per-click advertising services, and the problem is taken care of, right? Wrong.
Traffic Comes After Conversion
Do the math. If your web site isn’t converting visitors to sales now, how is sending more traffic to your site going to help?
On the other hand, by making a few simple changes to your marketing strategy and web site, you can easily increase your site conversion rates by 300%. Make a few more design and copy changes, and you could do what one of my clients did; increase your conversion rates by 1,700%.
Want to know how you can increase sales by 300%? Get the answer here >>
How to Convert Visitors To Buyers
You want the people who come to your web site to stay, read your pages and to either contact you by email or phone and to buy from you. What’s the fastest and most cost efficient way to make this happen?
1. Do you know anyone who owns an iPod? They’ve sold lot hotcakes and made Apple an unbelievable amount of money for two reasons: they look cool and they are amazingly easy to use. That’s what your web site should be too, appealing and easy to use.
Use the design of your site to make it clear what you want people to read first, second and third. Lead them to take the actions you want them to take.
2. Focus your marketing copy on your prospects’ problems and goals. Remember; your objective is to help people buy, not to hit them over the head with a sales pitch about your products or services.
3. Focus every page of your site on one or both of the following: generating leads (so you can follow up) and/or helping people get the product or service they want.
4. Remember that your site needs to establish you or your company as the trusted, expert source to go to for your particular product niche. Audio and video testimonials provide the social proof you need and with relevant, meaningful content are essential to establishing this.
I’m always amazed at how many web site owners expect to use their web site to increase sales by hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. and then spend so little time or effort creating a site that actually sells. And when the site doesn’t perform, they keep throwing money at advertising to bring traffic to a site that doesn’t work.
I know you’re smarter than that, which is why I want you to avoid this mistake. Discover how easy it is to increase sales from your web site. >>
To your success,
Charlie
P.S. Still on the fence about where to spend your online marketing dollars? Consider this. If you spent the same amount of time or money on increasing your conversion rates as you did on increasing traffic, you’d get four to twenty times the return.
Interested in finding out how to increase web sales? >>
P.P.S. Something is wrong with the math! Most web site owners spend more on advertising their site than they do on creating a site that sells. If you want your web site to make you your next hundred thousand or half million, isn’t it worth finding out how to do it?
Find out the secrets to creating a top-selling site >>
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Sometimes marketing your business can be fun.
One company executive wandered into his testing lab and decided to bring in a film crew to document how his products were tested with a dash of humor.
The result? A series of videos that are getting millions of views on YouTube and have increased sales by 500%.
Take a look at their most popular video >
And then come up with one you can use to market your business and see your sales soar with viral marketing.
– Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Sells
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What’s the one web marketing disaster that happens every day?
It happens to almost every website owner dozens, if not hundreds, of times a day.
A visitor clicks to your site. They take a look at your home page and then they leave without so much as an email or phone call to you.
If you have a top search engine position, this may happen hundreds of times a day. If you’re using pay-per-click advertising, this happens as often as you can afford to pay for it.
In the first case, you’ve probably invested a lot of hard work into achieving a top search engine ranking and in the second, a lot of money in advertising. The result? You’re losing money or barely breaking even on your web site investment.
Most business owners with well-planned sites get hundreds, or even thousands, of interested prospects visiting their sites each week and then – nothing. Your prospects don’t come back and they don’t buy from you in spite of all your efforts.
“What’s going on?” you ask yourself, as you try to make sense of all these lost opportunities to generate a lead or a sale. “What did I do wrong? Aren’t people interested in my products and services?”
It just doesn’t compute. You know that your existing customers are happy, so why don’t more people contact you and buy from your website? Find the answer here >>
For most business owners, the problem has nothing to do with you. You provide top quality products and services, don’t you!?
Yet, something happened when your prospect visited your website and left without a word. And this, more likely than not, is what that something was…
One of three things could have happened when your prospect landed on your site to make them leave without contacting you or buying from you.
1. They were looking for something different.
Your site sells jewelry and they were looking for dog treats. Unless the copy on your site has nothing to do with what you sell and the keywords you’re using for your pay-per-click ads are totally wrong – this is highly unlikely which brings me to…
2. Your prospects only had a passing interest.
When they saw your site they lost interest in looking for a solution to their problem. While anything can happen, most people are much more dogged about finding answers.
What’s the web marketing secret to that will get your prospects to come back? Find the answer here >>
Most people will search for hours online until they find what they want, which brings me to the third and most likely reason your prospects left without contacting you…
3. Your site didn’t show them what they wanted to see.
The key information they were searching for was missing entirely or wasn’t readily available. Or your site may not have given them information in the order they were expecting. Prospects are picky that way.
If you want your prospect to stay on your website, contact you and buy from you, you need to know:
– What your prospects want to read at the top of your homepage.
– How to get them to contact you before they leave your site and forget about you.
– How to lay out your web page to get your prospects to take action and buy from you.
– The common design mistakes that will send your prospects packing.
When you know this and build your site around the information your prospects want, you can easily convert up to 20% of all the visitors to your site into qualified prospects and up to 10% into clients and customers.
Let me ask you something. Who built your website?
Most business owners are way too busy to master the technology to build their sites themselves. They hire web designers and programmers. Sounds like a good idea.
Unfortunately, hardly any web designers know how to create sites that sell, either!
Let me repeat that. Web designers don’t know how to build a site that sells.
Most web designers know nothing about converting prospects into customers, which after all is what your site is supposed to do. If they had any formal training it was in design or programming, not in generating leads or sales or in how to make a profit with your site.
It’s not that some web designers aren’t creative and smart but without the right copy or a clear plan you’re asking them to do something that they don’t know how to do. It’d be like hiring a carpenter and telling him to build your dream house but not bothering to give him the plans for the foundation or layout of the house.
Want to make a profit with your web site? Discover what works >>
Leaving your site up and hoping your response rate will change and you’ll start raking in the sales is a waste of time, too. The truth is that you can be successful online if you have great products and services and if you know what works to get prospects to contact you and buy from you.
Ready to find out how make your site sell? Get the web marketing details here >>
Charlie
Web Marketing Ideas that Sell
To listen to the podcast online, use this link >>
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Ever get lost and wish you had a map or GPS to show you where to go?
Many years ago, I set out on a backpacking trip with a group of friends in the Cascade Mountains north of Seattle. I’d never been to the Cascades in Washington before, but my good friend Bart had grown up hiking in the region and was confident he could guide us.
Before we left the trail head, Bart glanced at his guidebook and made a few notes on the back on an envelope. We didn’t take the guidebook or Bart’s map. After all, we didn’t want to carry the extra three or four ounces of weight. We headed out into 505,000 acres of wilderness with just a few casual notes.
The first day we followed a clear trail and had no problems. The second day, we headed off on our own, following Bart’s scribbles. We climbed one mountain and started down to the valley floor below.
On paper, this had looked easy. Of course, the scrap of paper Bart had to guide us didn’t show the huge snowfield that we had to slide down, mostly out of control, much less the 200-foot cliff at the end of it.
I’ve done a few really stupid things in my life. Hanging onto a cliff with a fully loaded 40-pound backpack, no way down and no clear way to get back up was one of them.
Despite our youthful enthusiasm and determination, we had to painstakingly pick our way back up the cliff, retrace our steps up the snowfield, which was more ice than snow, and go back the way we’d come. We never did make it down to our destination in the valley and ended up cutting our trip short.
We never were totally lost, but we sure didn’t know how to get where we wanted to go.
Don’t put your prospects in this situation. Show them the quickest path to becoming a customer.
Want to make sure your prospects never get lost? Use this link to find out how >>
If prospects visit your site and it isn’t clear where to go first, second and third, they’ll leave without getting what they want. Without a clear map of what to read first, second and third, and a clear sequence of steps to take, they’re going to get lost. And they won’t have to backtrack to get out — they’ll click away in a matter of seconds.
Let me ask you a couple of questions about your business and your online marketing.
Did you consult a guidebook and use a map before you built your web site to ensure that it would work?
Does the organization of the copy and design elements on your site function like a map to make it insanely easy for prospects to know what to do on your site?
Heading out into the wilderness with just a few notes and no map was a dumb mistake that almost cost me my life, and it’s one I haven’t made again.
Want to avoid the number one mistake 99 out of 100 web site owners make? Find out what to do and what not to do >>
Most web site owners make the same mistake with their web sites with the result that they hardly generate any leads or sales. They build site pages that don’t guide prospects to become buyers. Then they leave the pages up there and wonder why nothing changes.
This is the lemming approach to web marketing. Just because most people do it, doesn’t make it right. And I know you don’t want to keep using this failed approach.
You want to know what actually works to generate online sales. You want to discover how to funnel prospects to your site, grab their attention, keep them reading and get them to contact you and buy from you.
Whether you use a web designer or build your web pages yourself, it pays to know how your site should work. If you don’t, who will?
Don’t expect your web designers to puzzle this out for you. They don’t know the answer, either.
Take responsibility for your own success.
If I’d wanted to avoid getting lost, I could have taken responsibility for taking a map myself. If I had, I would have seen the cliff and plotted a better route.
To make your site work, you need to do the same. Take responsibility for its success.
Discover how to create a web site that sells. Get the answers here >>
– Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Sells
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The number one question I hear from web site owners is, “How can I attract more people to my website?”
You want to know:
– What works to put your site on the first page of Google?
– How to play the search engine game without getting thrown out?
– How to stop wasting time on your search engine positioning and
finally start getting results so you can make money with your site?
If you’re frustrated I can understand it. There are a lot of ideas
floating around about what works with the search engines, which
ones should you use?
I’d be frustrated too. I know I was when I first started marketing
online. All that work to create a site and hardly any visitors or
sales.
So what’s an ambitious person who wants to grow their online
business supposed to do? I know you want to make your business more
profitable so I’m going to give you some options.
Here are three ways to handle this problem of improving your search
engine positioning and making more money with your site. They are:
1. Copy What You See Everyone Else Doing.
Just do what your competitors are doing. Try every idea you can
find and see if they work for you. This process of testing takes a
big investment of time and money – but you could do it.
Given enough time you might stumble on what works. You just might
identify the formula for putting your site at the top of the search
engines. Of course you don’t know which ideas you read about or see
others using are worth copying but you might get lucky. Who knows –
you could get it right.
I have to ask you, is this the fastest way to reach your goals or
wouldn’t it make more sense to get expert advice, which leads me
to…
2. Hire An SEO Expert.
You could seek out and hire a top search engine expert to put
together your search engine optimization campaign, and you’d spend
$12,000 to $20,000 a year. Not to mention, the sorry truth is that
many SEO firms don’t get it right. Remember they only get paid for
working on your search engine positioning, not for results or
increasing your profits.
Even if you can find an expert and their strategy works, once
you’ve paid them to keep your site at the top you’ll need to pay
them again and again.
For a few people hiring an SEO expert to do your search engine
positioning can be the solution, but it’s the most expensive one
and only suited to already successful businesses that have the cash
to invest in it which is why I also suggest…
3. Discover the SEO Solution and Use It Again and Again.
Find out for yourself how to put your site at the top of the search
engines. Recently I had the chance to interview Stephen Mahaney of
Planet Ocean and if you were on the call you heard that he knows
his stuff.
As I mentioned on the call, I discovered Stephen’s advice ten years
ago and it has helped me attract a flood of visitors each month.
month. Want to do the same >>
Ready to discover how to put your site at the top of the search
engines >>
I know you’re serious about building your online business so let me
ask you two questions:
How many people are there in your target market that could use your
products or services?
If you could tap, say 5% of your total target market, how many
sales would that be each month?
If you’re like most businesses there are thousands if not tens of
thousands of people who want and need what you deliver, but most
aren’t buying from you – yet.
Think about it. You have an ENORMOUS potential to profit online. If
you could just get even a small percentage of all these potential
customers and clients to your web site – you’d be making more than
you ever imagined.
Ready to discover the truth about the search engines and the simple
steps to take? Get answers >>
Which solution the right one for you? Let’s review.
1. Copying your competitors – you could but it rarely works.
2. Hiring an expert for top dollars – if you can find one you trust
it’s still expensive and comes with no guarantees.
3. Finding out what works yourself and using these successful SEO
strategies over and over to make more money.
Whatever you decide, it’s up to you to take action today to be more
successful. If you don’t who will?
To your success,
Charlie
P.S. If you sign up with Stephen in the next few days, you not only
get the comprehensive and easy to understand book, ‘The UnFair
Advantage Book on Winning The Search Engine Wars’, you’ll get a
free 6 months subscription to his all important updates so you can
stay abreast of the latest changes and what to do about them. Get
the details here >>
P.S. 2 Stephen guarantees your satisfaction. He calls it his ‘dog
ate it’ guarantee because he doesn’t care why you want a refund. If
you want one, just tell him the dog ate it! …even if it’s the
last day of your 6 month subscription!
Get ‘The UnFair Advantage Book on Winning The Search Engine Wars’
to see your profits soar >>
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Know of any good web designers?
I’m constantly getting requests for qualified web design firms and coming up short on answers. I have a few I regularly funnel work to but they quickly get swamped with the number of requests I get.
If you’re a highly qualified web designer, living here in the U.S. or Canada or know of one you’d like to refer, please use the comment box below to let me know.
Each week I hear horror stories from my clients about web designers they’ve worked with. I had one client that had a site that was trickling in leads so he hired a web designer to redo his site. $35,000 later he had a site that totally killed his lead generation and almost killed his business. It seems they plethora of inexperienced designers and unethical ones are giving the industry a bad rap.
So help me out!
If you’re reading this and are a web designer, you think you’re darn good, (or know someone who is) e.g. can design sites that look a lot better than this one, can take direction, have been at it for 5 years or more, have impeccable references, actually follow up when you get requests and want projects ranging in size from $5k to $25k,
And live and work in U.S or Canada
Leave a comment below with a link to your portfolio.
– Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results
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You built a web site to create a surge of inquiries and new business, but hardly anyone even drifts by, much less stays to learn about your company. Given the time and money you’ve spent, you’re frustrated that your web site hasn’t turned into a profit center overnight, and you’re inclined to dismiss its revenue-generating potential.
Don’t! There are three excellent ways to bring people to your web site so you can grow your online business. Use this link to find out what they are in this weeks web marketing article >>
Or use this link for the most comprehensive listing of places to list your site and improve your web marketing >>
Charlie
Web Marketing Ideas… That Get Results
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What wishes do you make before you toss a coin in a fountain or blow out the candles on your birthday cake? What things do you dream about doing, accomplishing, and achieving?
Do you wish for more time with family and friends, for instance? For more money to afford a vacation home, say, and more time to use it? For freedom to travel and the means to live the life you’ve always wanted?
I celebrated my birthday last weekend, and I still make wishes before I blow out the candles. Maybe its because I’ve got more candles on my cake now, but over the last nine years I’ve been able to make many of my wishes come true thanks to my solid web marketing strategies.
Thanks to you, my readers and clients, I’ve built a business that pays the bills and grows each year. Sales were up 250% in the last quarter of 2007 over the previous quarter.
My web-based business allows me the freedom to work anywhere there is Internet access and a phone line, including my Vermont ski home. When the skiing is good, I’m there, doing what I love, working and playing hard.
Are you doing work you truly enjoy, having time to spend with your family and pursuing your other interests? You can!
What’s keeping you from making your wishes come true? Most people are stymied by not knowing exactly which steps to take to accomplish their goals. Wouldn’t you like to have a step-by-step guide to launching your own online business or making your existing business even more successful?
Since I just had my Birthday, I’m feeling generous. I’m going to practically give away the Insider Secrets to Creating Web Sites That Sell so you can review it for 30 days on my dime. You pay only if you keep it. Use this link >>
It contains the exact proven web marketing strategies and processes I’ve used to put my own and my clients’ sites at the top of the search engine listings. You’ll also find the techniques I use to convert all the traffic I get to a steady stream of sales. You’re getting the inside ideas I use each week to build and maintain my highly successful online business that you can use too.
Interested? Ready to claim your trial copy of the Insider Secrets to Creating Web Sites That Sell? Use this link >>
You may think I’m nuts to be giving away this web marketing manual worth over a thousand dollars for just $2.95. It’s true that I’m taking a risk by sending it to you and paying out of my own pocket. The one time I offered the Insider Secrets to Creating Web Sites That Sell to my readers, 95% of the people who reviewed it, kept it, using it to finally put their business into high gear.
Do you want your web site to start making more money than you ever imagined? Use this link to get the details >>
You have a just 4 days to claim your special Birthday trial offer for the Insider Secrets to Creating Web Sites That Sell. The offer ends Friday.
With or without blowing on candles, you can make your wishes come true. Discover how to build and manage your own outrageously successful online business. Find out exactly what works to attract visitors to your site and how to convert these prospects into profits.
To your success,
Charlie
Web Marketing Ideas that Work
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